I have had an Eheim surface extractor for 5 years. It works well-no more
surface film. Originally I connected it directly to the suction side of a
Magnum 350 which was way too much flow for the surface extractor and it made
a lot of noise. Eheim sells a ' T ' so you can T it into the suction line
to your filter which solved the problem.

From time to time, I look for a better solution than the Eheim and have not
seen anything that looks better.

Good Luck
"Justin" wrote in message
...
Thanks for your response...

Maybe I will have to look at an eheim surface extractor instead... Don't
want to blow up my filter...


"Empty" wrote in message
news
On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 00:47:19 +1100, Justin wrote:

I my current tank, i notice a lot of film on the top of the water and
today when I was at the LFS, there was a 4x2x2 with a corner over-flow.
I
was wondering if I could use this to fill with media and then have it
running off to my eheim 2217 canister filter..?

Be very careful to never get your levels low. The main problem I see is
that you will have to top off very frequently to keep the water low
enough
to flow in (instead of submerge) the overflow, and high enough that it
always has water.

I have done some reading on the net and the only mention of this type of
set-up, as most have a sump set-up, is that the canister filter has to
have it's motor at the bottom for some reason...??

They say this so that if/when your overflow dries out you don't burn out
your motor and hopefully the motor can suck in enough air to keep the
bacteria aerated.

It would remove the dead plant leave that float on my water and would
also hide most of the filtration equipment so it wouldn't distract from
the main thing - the plants...

That's your job, not the filters- leaving dead leaves to decay is a fast
trip to algae land.

~Empty